Category: The Washington Free Beacon
Liberals Insisted the Supreme Court Was ‘Plotting’ To Abolish Gay Marriage. They Were Wrong, Obviously.
Democrats and their journalist allies spent the last several years insisting the U.S. Supreme Court was hell-bent on making gay marriage illegal again. Many warned if Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris in 2024, the Court would be eager to overturn its 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which established a nationwide right to gay marriage.
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Out to Lunch? Sen. Tim Kaine Says He Was So Distracted by Virginia Elections That He Couldn’t Pay Attention to Shutdown Negotiations.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D.) told a reporter he wasn’t giving his full attention to shutdown negotiations before Sunday because he was so focused on the elections in his home state of Virginia.
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‘Pathetic’ Senate Democrats cave, advancing key shutdown vote and prompting intraparty uproar: ‘It’s a surrender’
Over a month into the record-breaking shutdown, enough Senate Democrats finally caved to advance a key vote, sparking outrage within the party.
Eight Senate Democrats broke from their party late Sunday night to break the filibuster in a 60-40 vote, advancing key legislation and putting the government back on track to reopen after a record 41-day stalemate. The Senate is expected to formally pass the legislation Monday, when the continuing resolution will be punted back to the House.
‘America deserves better.’
Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Jacky Rosen of Nevada, and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire joined Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Angus King (I) of Maine, and Catherine Cortez Masto, who have consistently voted to reopen the government for the last six weeks. Notably, only Shaheen and Durbin are up for re-election in 2026, and both are retiring.
Although these other rogue Democrats are electorally safe for the next several years, many of their colleagues have ridiculed them for bucking the party and cutting a deal with Republicans.
RELATED: Democrat senator makes stunning admission about Obamacare failures
Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
After 15 failed votes to reopen the government, Democrats folded and finally came to the negotiating table. Party negotiators walked away with a continuing resolution to fund the government through January 30 featuring a reversal on reduction-in-force notices issued after October 1 and also barring future RIFs from being issued through the duration of the CR.
While Republicans made concessions on RIFs, Democrats ultimately were unable to push through any meaningful policy goals and fell short on their call to extend Obamacare subsidies. In response, high-profile Democrats tore into their Senate colleagues for caving, calling it a “surrender.”
“Pathetic,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office said in a post on X. “This isn’t a deal. It’s a surrender. Don’t bend the knee!”
“America deserves better,” Newsom added in another post on X.
RELATED: Senate Republicans betray Trump, help Democrats try to block tariffs
Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
It’s not just rumored presidential hopefuls who took a stand against their Democrat Senate allies. Many of the eight defectors’ colleagues came out against their vote, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).
“There’s no way to sugarcoat what happened tonight,” Democrat Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said in a post on X. “And my fear is that Trump gets stronger, not weaker, because of this acquiescence. I’m angry — like you. But I choose to keep fighting.”
“To my mind, this was a very, very bad vote,” independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont said in a post on X.
“Just on Tuesday, we had an election, all over this country. And what the election showed is that the American people want us to stand up to Trumpism. … That is what the American people wanted. But tonight, that is not what happened.”
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‘No MAGA left behind’: Trump pardons Giuliani, Powell, others involved in 2020 alternate electors case
President Donald Trump has announced “full, complete, and unconditional” pardons for those allegedly involved in the effort to arrange an alternate slate of electors and submit certificates of ascertainment indicating that Trump won the 2020 Electoral College vote in critical states.
According to the presidential proclamation shared by U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin early Monday morning in response to an older post stating, “No MAGA left behind,” pardons were also granted to individuals who attempted “to expose voting fraud and vulnerabilities in the 2020 Presidential Election.”
‘President Trump is putting an end to the Biden regime’s communist tactics once and for all.’
Martin signaled that Trump, unlike his predecessor, was directly involved in the pardon process, noting that the signatures on the pardons were “wet (not autopen),” meaning they were hand-signed.
Among the dozens of names identified in the non-exhaustive list of those pardoned is Trump lawyer Boris Epshteyn, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell, and John Eastman, a lawyer who advised Trump’s 2020 campaign. Trump did not pardon himself.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to Blaze News, “These great Americans were persecuted and put through hell by the Biden administration for challenging an election, which is the cornerstone of democracy.”
“Getting prosecuted for challenging results is something that happens in communist Venezuela, not the United States of America, and President Trump is putting an end to the Biden regime’s communist tactics once and for all,” added Leavitt.
RELATED: Inside the Dem-hatched scheme to destroy attorneys who supported Trump
Valerie Plesch/Washington Post/Getty Images
The proclamation notes at the outset that these pardons serve to end “a grave national injustice perpetrated upon the American people following the 2020 Presidential Election and continues the process of national reconciliation.”
A White House official told Blaze News that “Americans in seven states acted to preserve alternate slates of electors as a result of major issues with the 2020 election. They took action, while exercising their First Amendment rights, that the system was designed to let them do: preserve the right of the American people to seek redress including through our courts and federal and state legislative processes.”
The official likened the actions allegedly taken by some of those pardoned to those taken by “the famous 1960 Hawaiian alternate electors for President Kennedy, who were never prosecuted or even questioned.”
“The alternate electors were involved in a purely federal constitutional proceeding before Congress. Under long-established law, states have no jurisdiction with respect to any alleged wrongdoing associated with a federal proceeding,” added the official.
‘I wish the pardon would terminate the lawfare totally.’
Although providing a clean slate and shield where federal charges are concerned, the pardons are largely symbolic, as they are unlikely to help those facing state-level prosecutions — such as those defendants facing charges in Nevada, those embroiled in the so-called “fake electors” case in Arizona’s Maricopa County, and those who recently lost their appeal to move their Georgia case to federal court.
Jeff Clark, the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Trump Office of Management and Budget, who is among those pardoned, expressed gratitude to the president but stressed that his legal battle is far from over.
“I wish the pardon would terminate the lawfare totally — and under SCOTUS’s venerable Ex Parte Garland decision, it certainly should. But zooming in on the DC Office of Disciplinary Counsel, we expect the leader of that office not to drop his case,” wrote Clark.
“I wish I could be declaring this legal nonsense over for good — a pardon should totally and abruptly kill off these federal bar and Georgia-federal attacks on me and many others.”
Martin noted in a Monday-morning X post that when he started in his current role, “POTUS encouraged us to look at two categories of Americans especially: First, those who needed and deserved clemency, especially long serving inmates who are ready to be released. Second, he wanted us to look at those people who had been targeted by the Biden administration. The targeted is a huge group of Americans.”
The pardon attorney indicated that “one group that jumped up right away” was the “alternate electors and their affiliates who were targeted by Jack Smith and others.”
The pardons come just days after Trump approved a pardon for three-time World Series champion Darryl Strawberry and months after the president pardoned approximately 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants.
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McCartney Takes Flight
There should be no second acts in the lives of rock bands. The first act invariably ends in deflation and recrimination. The second act is premeditated where the first was spontaneous. It measures success by its receipts, not its music. Most acts get robbed blind the first time round, so we should not begrudge the big payback. Nor are we obliged to attend the overpriced revels or listen to the albums. It is understandable that a man in possession of a mansion by the age of 30 should need a hobby. But it is obvious that George Harrison should have settled for a long and rewarding retirement of meditation and cocaine, rather than inflict the karmic deficit of his solo albums on a vulnerable public.
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The Sacred and Profane Decade
One of the stranger moments in the history of American popular music occurred in the winter of 1986, when the chorus of the hottest song on the pop charts featured Greek lyrics from a Christian prayer. Teenagers speeding with their friends rolled down their windows, let the wind blow their Aqua Netted hair, and yelled, “Kyrie Eleison”—Lord have mercy—“down the road that I must travel!” At keg parties in fraternities and sororities across the land, college students sang, in the native language of their social organizations, “Lord have mercy through the darkness of the night.” And while it’s true that many of the song’s fans probably thought they were singing “carry a laser,” Mr. Mister’s “Kyrie Eleison” topped the Billboard 100 for two consecutive weeks. As Tom Breihan describes it, the hit pop song is “a textbook example of ambiguous worship music.”
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McCloskey’s Latest Spy Thriller Turns a New Page
In just five years, David McCloskey has gone from being a complete unknown to his current status as one of our leading writers of spy fiction, a remarkably rapid ascent. While his first three novels—Damascus Station (2021), Moscow X (2023), and The Seventh Floor (2024)—were set in the same fictional universe, centered around the CIA (where McCloskey himself spent seven or eight years as an analyst, mostly in the Middle East), The Persian marks a new departure.
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Not Lost in Translation
A new translation of Thucydides is an occasion to be celebrated. An Athenian, Thucydides is the historian of the war that dealt a devastating blow to the city-states of ancient Greece in the fifth century B.C. The Peloponnesian War was a 27-year-long conflict between the two major power blocs of the historian’s world, one led by his own country, Athens, and the other led by its rival, Sparta. Only one side could win but, in the end, both sides paid a price in blood, treasure, and spirit. A disaster but one that in Thucydides’ hands offers one of civilization’s most powerful learning experiences.
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‘Fake News’: US Confirms Aid Is Flowing Into Gaza, Contradicting Hamas Propaganda
The United States and Israel are moving an average of 674 humanitarian aid trucks through Gaza each day, delivering more than 15,000 loads of commercial goods and medicine since the ceasefire began on Oct. 10, according to figures compiled by the U.S.-led Civil-Military Coordination Center, the multinational body running the operations, and shared with the Washington Free Beacon. They contradict Hamas claims that Israel has hampered aid distribution in Gaza—and reports from anti-Israel media outlets relying on the terror outfit to make the same argument.
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‘Dismay And Disgust’: Federal Judge Rage Quits, Blasting ‘Existential Threat’ Trump Over ‘Angry Attacks On The Courts’
‘As I watched in dismay and disgust from my position on the bench, I came to feel deeply uncomfortable operating under the necessary ethical rules that muzzle judges’ public statements and restrict their activities’
